fine, just redefine "Conservative" whenever you feel like it...

Interstate Ribbons of Progress (George F. Will):

A conservative Republican president who grew up in a Kansas town where hitching posts for horses lined unpaved streets launched what was, and remains, the largest public works project in the nation's history -- the Interstate Highway System. Its ribbons of concrete represent a single thread of continuity through the nation's history.

That's an awfully funny thing, calling a president "conservative" who 1) instituted the largest federal-level public works project in American history, 2) had the chance to remove the largest socialist action in American history (Social Security) but didn't, and 3) continued to support the G.I. bill, increasing the size of the educated middle class on the upper class's tax dollars.

Strong federal government instead of stronger states, public tax dollars for private initiatives, a face-saving "wait and see" policy regarding political-extremist McCarthy (then driving the "conservative" effort of the time to its inevitable grave), preservation of the stronger socialist/liberal initiatives of his Democratic predecessors, and no ridiculous public campaign to replace the judicial appointments of his predecessors.  Not terribly conservative by most definitions I know of.

Hell, he was put in charge of the largest united armed force of the planet's history by a Democrat!

Ike was a moderate, often just signing away whatever his moderately-conservative (52-54) or moderately-liberal (54-60) congress threw at him.  Yes, he often justified his particular initiatives with the mantra "supporting a strong military", but that mantra didn't become the Republican/conserative slogan-of-death until Reagan used it to represent Carter's weaknesses in military actions such as the failed Iran hostage rescue attempt.

By the accepted definitions of Conservatism, then or now, Ike never qualified.  He was a Republican, to be sure, but he was no conservative.

(p.s., I know its George Will and he's an idiot, but I had to get that out anyways...)

Historical Update: Ike did have economically conservative tendencies and over time did increase the number of bills from his 2nd term democratic congresses that he vetoed. Though most of those vetos were against measures from the liberal congress he was facing (like housing spending) that would have increased the federal deficit enlarged by FDR and Truman in their war efforts. Socially moderate, but he did feel (as a TRUE fiscal conservative, it seems) that it was in the country's interest to reign in the deficit and debt as long as we were in a boom time. Mind you, he did this by vetoing NEW spending he felt was unnecessary in order to let accepted (and acceptable) tax levels pay the debt off in time.

think anti-immigration efforts aren't motivated by racism?

Immigration — and the Curse of the Black Legend - New York Times:

Representative J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, who calls for deporting illegal immigrants and changing the Constitution so that children born to them in the United States can't claim citizenship, denounces "defeatist wimps unwilling to stand up for our culture" against alien "invasion." Those who oppose making English the official language, he adds, "reject the very notion that there is a uniquely American identity, or that, if there is one, that it is superior to any other."

Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, depicts illegal immigration as "a scourge" abetted by "a cult of multiculturalism" that has "a death grip" on this nation. "We are committing cultural suicide," Mr. Tancredo claims. "The barbarians at the gate will only need to give us a slight push, and the emaciated body of Western civilization will collapse in a heap."

ON talk radio and the Internet, foes of immigration echo the black legend more explicitly, typecasting Hispanics as indolent, a burden on the American taxpayer, greedy for benefits and jobs, prone to criminality and alien to our values — much like those degenerate Spaniards of the old Southwest and those gold-mad conquistadors who sought easy riches rather than honest toil. At the fringes, the vilification is baldly racist. In fact, cruelty to Indians seems to be the only transgression absent from the familiar package of Latin sins.

This section follows an excellent summary of Spanish presense in North America, far more extensive than any the Brits ever achieved, and then a history of the campaign to paint Spaniards, and later Mexicans, as people unworthy of holding the lands conquered by the United States from 1841 to 1848.

But really, "Western civilization will collapse in a heap" merely because Pedro gets a job and some legal medicine and his family doesn't starve?

Give me a break...

Western civilization thrives when those who aren't a part of it embrace it for the benefits it gives.

look ma, no science!

two posts in a row and no ranting about the religious right or the anti-science efforts.  go fig!

lets see if I can last the weekend...